Using Contacts¶

Inheriting and overriding contacts¶

Contacts are inherited by descendant objects. If you associate a contact with an object that is the parent of another object, the child, grandchild, and so on inherit the contact. For example, if you associate a contact with a schema, all of the tables in the schema inherit the contact by default.

Contact inheritance is overridden if a child object has a contact with the same purpose. For example, suppose someone associates the following two contacts with the ac_sch schema, which contains the table t1:

Now suppose someone associates the contact finance_dept with t1 for the purpose of access approval. The contacts associated with t1 are now the following:

The contact responsible for access approval on the ac_schema has been replaced with a contact directly associated with t1, but t1 continues to inherit the data_stewards contact from the schema.

Supported objects¶

You can associate a contact with the following objects:

Create a contact¶

When you create a contact, you specify the name of the contact and how someone should communicate with the contact. Communication methods include the following:

• The URL of a website.

• An email address, which can be a distribution list.

• A list of Snowflake users.

You can create a contact using Snowsight or SQL. It can be helpful to create all contacts in a dedicated schema.

Snowsight:

1. Sign in to Snowsight.

2. Select Data.

3. Navigate to the schema where you want to create the contact.

4. Select Create » Contact.

5. Specify the name of the contact.

6. Choose a communication method, then specify the email address, users, or URL that data users will contact for assistance with an object.

7. Select the roles that will have the ability to associate the contact with objects. These roles are granted the APPLY privilege on the contact.

8. Select Create.

SQL:

You can execute the CREATE CONTACT command to create a new contact.

Examples

Create a contact for the support team that is reached through their website.

CREATE CONTACT support_dept URL = 'http://internalsupport.example.com';

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Create a contact for the finance team that is reached via an email address, which acts as a distribution list.

CREATE CONTACT finance_dept EMAIL_DISTRIBUTION_LIST = 'fd_dl@example.com';

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Create a contact for database administrators, as identified by the name of their Snowflake user objects.

CREATE CONTACT db_admins USERS = (ex_admin1, ex_admin2);

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Associate a contact with an object¶

When you associate a contact with an object, you specify the name of the contact along with the purpose of the association between the contact and the object. When users view all of the contacts associated with an object, they’ll be able decide who to communicate with based on the purpose of each contact.

The purpose of having a contact associated with an object can be one of the following:

You can associate a contact and define its purpose when modifying an existing object or creating a new object.

WITH CONTACT ( <purpose> = <contact_name> [ , <purpose> = <contact_name> ... ] )

CREATE TABLE t1 (col1 VARCHAR, col2 INT) WITH CONTACT (ACCESS_APPROVAL = finance_dept);

CREATE DATABASE my_db WITH CONTACT (SUPPORT = internal_support);

CREATE SCHEMA sch1 WITH CONTACT (STEWARD = data_stewards, ACCESS_APPROVAL = finance_dept);

Detach a contact from an object¶

Snowsight:

1. Sign in to Snowsight.

2. Select Data » Databases.

3. Navigate to the object.

4. Select the Details tab.

5. Find the Assigned Contacts section and select the Edit icon.

6. Find the purpose (for example, Approver) that has the contact that you want to detach, and use the drop-down list to select None.

7. Select Save.

SQL:

The ALTER … UNSET CONTACT commands lets you detach a contact from an object. The syntax to detach the contact is the same for all objects that can be associated with a contact:

ALTER <object_type> <object_name>
  UNSET CONTACT <purpose>

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You identify the contact to detach by specifying the purpose of the association between the contact and the object, not by the contact name. For a list of possible purposes that can be specified to detach a contact, see predefined purposes.

For example, to detach the contact that was added as the STEWARD of a table, execute:

ALTER TABLE t1 UNSET CONTACT STEWARD;

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View contacts for an object¶

Snowsight:

When you navigate to an object in Snowsight, the contacts that are associated with the object appear on the Details tab.

SQL:

Users with at least one privilege on an object can use the GET_CONTACTS table function to view the contacts associated with that object. The function returns a row for each contact associated with the object.

For example, to list the contacts on the table t1, a user with at least one privilege can execute the following:

SELECT *
  FROM TABLE(SNOWFLAKE.CORE.GET_CONTACTS('t1', 'TABLE'));

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For each contact, the function lists the following:

• Purpose of the contact.

• Method of communication for the contact.

• Whether the contact was associated with the object directly or inherited from a parent object.

Governing contacts and their associations¶

Snowsight:

To list the contacts that have been created in a schema and drill down into the details for a specific contact:

1. Sign in to Snowsight.

2. Use the Data » Databases menu to navigate to the schema.

3. Select the Contacts tab.

4. Select a contact if you want to view details about it, including the objects with which it is associated.

SQL:

The ACCOUNT_USAGE schema provides the following views to help manage contacts:

• CONTACTS view - Lists all contacts in the account.

• CONTACT_REFERENCES view - Lists the objects with which a contact has been associated.

Access control privileges¶

The following summarizes the privileges a user needs to work with contacts.